Paschal v. State of Arkansas, No. CR 11-673 (Ark. Mar. 29, 2012), is an interesting case. Now, before anyone gets too emotional about this decision, the court did not approve of relationships between students and teachers. Rather, in a 4-3 split, it held that that a state law making it a crime for a K-12 teacher to engage in consensual sexual contact with a student who is an adult violates the state constitution. The court’s majority determined that the state constitution recognizes a “fundamental right to privacy implicit in our law” that “protects all private, consensual, noncommerical acts of sexual intimacy between adults.” While the state Supreme court acknowledged that it was possible that the state legislature “intended to criminalize a teacher’s use of his or her position of trust or authority over an adult student to procure sex,” the majority pointed out the law contained no language indicating such an intent.